People across the Globe are really beginign to think that the Market is on the up and up becaause of promising inflation data. The Us market was closed for MLK
day on Monday, but certain assets were closing at highs not seen since 2018 in the UK and France.
Remote work is becoming a thing of the past even though employees prefer it. The main
reason is that employers feel that productivity has lagged and the cost of running an empty building is a thorn in the side. Fun fact, right before I left the NBA to start C3 a costly redesign was just finished of the NBA office. Then the pandemic hit, and that redesign was just money down the tube. A lot of employers were put in similar situations becase of the work from home orders. Now you have to threaten employees with getting fired to get them to return to in person work.
Bitcoin has hit $20K+ for the first time in nearly two months. That has Crypto Traders pretty excited, but the supposed decentralized
currency seems to be moving in lockstep with the market. This of course is just evidence that most investors think of crypto as another buy-low and sell the high abstract asset.
The revolutionary AI ChatGPT is being used by more students every day to cheat. ChatGPT can write
five-paragraph essays with the click of a button and often it can do it better than most students. Teachers are struggling to find ways to spot this type of cheating. The race to build software to detect AI-generated material is on and the winner could be cashing in big with government contracts to public schools and universities.
Ukraine
wants the West to give more support to Ukraine in its defense against Russia. Billions of dollars have already been sent to Ukraine from the US alone, but all that money and equipment have not been enough to deter Russia from launching deadly attacks like the most recent one on a civilian apartment complex that killed 30 people. The debate is always raging on whether or not the US should be involved to the extent we are or if we should be involved more. C3 does not have strong opinions on
this either way as both sides can make compelling arguments, but we do know that the war on Ukraine is costing Americans Billions if not Trillions in inflationary costs.
China claims that over 60,000 people have died from Covid since it dropped its heavy-handed restrictions in
December. That is more than the official death total for the rest of the pandemic. This means that either China is and has been lying about Covid, or it is better to let people build immunity and not keep them locked up indefinitely. Either way, it is a case against lockdowns from a pure health perspective. This of course has huge financial implications because as China is allowed to open back up so is the rest of the world economy given that China is the big Number two in world economics
after the US.
Overall mortality from Cancer has gone down by a third since 1991.
This is all because of the modern marvels of improved treatment and prevention. The HPV vaccine alone is said to have reduced cervical cancer in women by 65% since its introduction.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is advocating for lawmakers to raise the cap on government
borrowing or the Treasury Department will stop making contributions to Federal employee retirement accounts. If the debt ceiling is not increased then the US gov. could default and that means economic destruction for everyone. But many people in congress feel this is a major bargaining chip and should be used to pass certain legislation. The fight will probably get pretty nasty leading up to June when the current debt ceiling will be reached. FYI the current debt ceiling is $31.4 trillion.
That is a lot of debt that will never go away despite some economic miracle for the US.
Teslas are cheaper in the US and Europe because of price cutting. Why the price cutting? Well, Tesla fell short of its
deliverable predictions for 2022 and even though it did extremely well, projections are all that matter in world economics. Tesla has cut prices in hopes of meeting its projections for 2023.
Chinas population is on the decline and India is about to become the most populous country in the world.
